6.  The applicants are:
1) Tanzila Dobriyeva, born in 1979;
2) Milana Adzhiyeva, born in 1984;
3) Yelizaveta Dobriyeva, born in 1969;
4) Fatima Dzhaniyeva, born in 1982.
7.  The first and second applicants live in St Petersburg, the third applicant lives in Arkhangelsk, and the fourth applicant lived in Ingushetia before leaving it in December 2009 (her current whereabouts are unknown).
8.  The applicants are distantly related to Maksharip Aushev, a well-known Ingushetia businessman who was killed, along with his sister, in October 2009 in Kabardino-Balkaria by unidentified gunmen. Prior to that, in August 2008 his colleague and a co-founder of the opposition Internet site Ingushetia.ru, Magomed Yevloyev, was killed in Nazran by a police officer who was later found guilty of causing death by negligence.
9.  On 15 December 2009 the fourth applicant – Maksharip Aushev’s widow – and her mother and two brothers were the victims of a car explosion in Ingushetia. The fourth applicant, who was in the last month of pregnancy, was the only survivor of the explosion. That crime has not been solved.
10.  On 17 December 2009 the car of another brother of the fourth applicant exploded in Ingushetia in front of a police road block, wounding more than 20 servicemen. His relatives disputed the identity of the suicide bomber.
11.  After the explosion of 15 December 2009, the fourth applicant was taken to St Petersburg for treatment. She was accompanied by her relatives: Yunus Dobriyev, born in 1971; Magomed Adzhiyev, born in 1989; Yusup Dobriyev, born in 1969; and Ali Dzhaniyev, born in 1992.
12.  The first applicant is the wife of Yunus Dobriyev; they have one minor son. The second applicant is a sister of Magomed Adzhiyev. The third applicant is the wife of Yusup Dobriyev; they have four minor children. The fourth applicant is a sister of Ali Dzhaniyev. Yunus and Yusup Dobriyev are brothers and the fourth applicant’s uncles, Magomed Adzhiyev is their nephew and the fourth applicant’s cousin.
13.  On 25 December 2009 the four men listed in paragraph 11 above, together with the fourth applicant, arrived in St Petersburg from Ingushetia. They went to the flat rented by the second applicant and her husband, where they joined other members of the family. At about midnight the four men listed above left for Yunus Dobriyev’s home, with the first applicant’s husband, Yunus Dobriyev, driving the VAZ 21099 car. About one hour later the first applicant called her husband’s mobile phone and then those of the other three men, but they were switched off.
14.  Alerted by the first applicant, at about 4.30 a.m. the second applicant’s husband and his friend drove along the route likely to have been taken by the missing men. They noted a Lada car following them and wrote down its registration number, as well as those of several other cars following them. At some point they even approached the Lada and saw two men sitting inside whom they later described to the police.
15.  On 26 December 2009 the first applicant submitted a complaint to the local police department in St Petersburg about the disappearance of her husband and three of his relatives. She indicated that she had last seen her husband and the three other men at about 11.30 p.m. on 25 December 2009 at Kamskaya Street, driving away in his car. They had intended to drop two of the men at the Tekhnologicheskiy Institut metro station and then continue to her home address at Novikova Street. At about midnight Yunus Dobriyev, the first applicant’s husband, had called her and said that their car was being followed by a suspicious vehicle, after which telephone contact with the four men had been cut off. She stressed that her husband had always informed her about his movements and that he had never disappeared in such a manner before. She stated that she had also informed the police, orally, that she had seen a Ford Focus following her on that day. The second applicant also stated that she had been followed by unidentified men on that day.
16.  The events of October-December 2009 and the disappearance of the applicants’ relatives were reported in the Russian and international press and by human rights NGOs, including Memorial.
17.  On 28 December 2009 the fourth applicant gave birth to a daughter in a hospital in St Petersburg.
18.  Following the disappearance of the four men, the first and the second applicant lodged complaints with various investigation bodies, public authorities and prosecutors’ offices. Other relatives and friends of the disappeared men also lodged several complaints in St Petersburg, Arkhangelsk and Ingushetia. In their statements they connected the murder of Maksharip Aushev and the explosion of the car carrying his relatives in Ingushetia with the disappearance of the four men. The police investigations opened into those allegations were eventually transferred to the St Petersburg law-enforcement authorities for further processing.
19.  According to the Government, following the first applicant’s complaint of 26 December 2009 a check was initiated by the district police departments of the Primorskiy and then the Vasileostrovskiy districts of St Petersburg. The criminal investigation file contains two additional statements taken from the first applicant on 26 December 2009, which contain the same information as her complaint of the same date (see paragraph 15 above).
20.  At the end of December 2009 the police sought, in vain, to obtain information about the missing men from various institutions and data bases, such as plane and train tickets sales, hospitals, detention places and accident registers. On 28 December 2009 the head of the Vasleostrovskiy District Department of the Interior informed all local police services about the search for the four men and the missing vehicle. On 28 and 30 December 2009 the police inspected the neighbourhood around Kamskaya Street but found no sign of the missing men or their vehicle. On 31 December 2009 police officers identified and tried to question the owner of the vehicle driven by Yunus Dobriyev on the basis of a general power of attorney, but no relevant information was obtained.
21.  On 4 January 2010 the police obtained some closed‑circuit TV (CCTV) records from street cameras along the route presumed to have been taken by the applicants’ relatives. On 11 January 2010 the police searched Yunus Dobriyev’s room in the residence where lived and registered his car on the list of missing cars. Also in early January 2010, the police sought the call history of the mobile phones of the four men who had disappeared.
22.  On 5 January 2010 the police in Ingushetia questioned Ayna A., sister of the missing Yunus and Yusup Dobriyev, and the mother of Magomed Adzhiyev. Statements were taken from the first applicant in January 2010 on two occasions. On 9 January 2010 she explained that she thought the disappearance of her husband and three relatives was linked to the attempt on the life of the fourth applicant in which her mother and two brothers had been killed. On 19 January 2010 the second applicant was asked to give statements in St Petersburg and the third applicant in Arkhangelsk, where she lived.
23.  The investigators found that the fourth applicant had been in a maternity hospital in St Petersburg between 28 December 2009 and 2 January 2010, and had then left with her baby. According to a representative, the fourth applicant feared for her life and did not want her whereabouts to be known.
24.  On 25 January 2010 the Investigative Committee of the St Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal investigation into the alleged murder of the four men under Article 105 § 2 of the Criminal Code. With their observations of September 2011, the Government submitted over 3,000 pages of documents collected in that investigation (fourteen volumes).
25.  After the criminal proceedings were opened, the first applicant was questioned on 27 January and 1 and 9 March 2010. The second applicant was questioned on 5 March and 26 April 2010. On 27 January and 5 March 2010, respectively, the first and second applicants were granted victim status in the proceedings. On 2 April 2010 the third applicant was granted victim status. On 15 April 2010 the investigator decided to grant victim status to Ali Dzhaniyev’s grandmother, who was resident in Nazran.
26.  On 29 January 2010 the second applicant’s husband was questioned and stated that on the night of 26 December 2009 when he had travelled along the route presumed to have been taken earlier by their missing relatives he had been followed by a Lada-Priora car in which there had been two men with “Slavic features”. At some point he had stopped the car and approached their vehicle. He had seen two men and noticed that they had a thermos flask in the car. He had threatened them with calling the police, to which they had reacted calmly. He had noted the car’s registration number, which was later found to be invalid.
27.  On 2 February 2010 the investigators questioned Sulambek A., brother of the missing Magomed Adzhiyev and of the second applicant.
28.  On 4 February 2010 a district court in St Petersburg authorised the interception of seven GSM mobile phone numbers used by the missing men and obtained information from the mobile phone operators of their detailed billing and connection listings for the period between 10 December 2009 and 4 February 2010. One connection to Yunus Dobriyev’s phone was noted at 2 a.m. on 26 December 2009 near the southern end of the city, at the Rybatskoye metro station.
29.  Also on 4 February 2010, the investigators examined six DVDs containing records of the city transport monitoring system (recordings from CCTV street cameras) made on the night when the applicants’ relatives had gone missing along their presumed route. According to the transcript prepared on the same day, the footage showed that between 12.20 a.m. and 12.25 a.m. the applicants’ car had been followed by several vehicles, including two grey minibuses and a dark coloured crossover vehicle.
30.  The applicants alleged that further evidence, including footage from security cameras situated at the place where their relatives had been intercepted, had not been requested by the investigators and had been destroyed several days after the incident. The second applicant also alleged that on 26 December 2009 she had been followed by a Ford Focus which she had identified in the recordings. A copy of the DVD containing the relevant footage was submitted by the applicants to the Court.
31.  The VAZ car belonging to the applicants’ relatives was found on 11 February 2010 parked near a hospital in St Petersburg. On the same day the car was examined by police experts. On 29 March 2010 the experts concluded that there were no fingerprints inside the car which could be used for identification purposes. On 31 March 2010 the car was returned to its owner, the first applicant. On 19 April 2010 the car was examined by the police for the second time and the report noted two dents: on the front left and back right sides of the vehicle. Several witnesses stated that they had seen the vehicle permanently parked near the hospital since November or December 2009.
32.  On 12 February 2010 the first applicant voluntarily submitted herself to a polygraph test. The results of the test were interpreted as indicating that she knew what had happened to her husband and his relatives and that she could have been involved in their “disappearance”. According to the domestic law, such questioning cannot be used as evidence in criminal proceedings, but the Government relied on it in their observations.
33.  In March 2010 the applicants identified several eyewitnesses to their relatives’ detention. On 9 March 2010 three local residents testified to the investigators that on the night in question they had seen a VAZ 2109 car being blocked on Bolshoi Prospect by a dark-coloured off-road vehicle, following which persons wearing civilian clothes and armed with hand pistols had dragged the passengers and the driver out of the VAZ, handcuffed the detained men and put them in different vehicles (a dark minivan and a VAZ 2110) and then left. Some of the assailants had been wearing masks. One of them had got into the VAZ 2109 and driven away in it. The whole operation had lasted for two or three minutes; one of the men had filmed the events with a video camera, while another had directed the traffic to avoid the lane. The witnesses described one white minibus with tinted windows and one smaller light coloured minibus. The witnesses used terms such as “like in crime reports” or “like in a movie”. They referred to different times in connection with the events (between 8.30 p.m. on 25 December and 1 a.m. on 26 December). One additional witness, L., questioned in March 2011, identified the off-road vehicle as a UAZ-Patriot and the minivan as a Ford Transit. He specified that each of the four men had been made to lie face down on the road and that their hands had been handcuffed or tied behind their backs. As soon as they had been placed into the Ford minivan, one of the assailants had collected the items – hats, mobile phones – which had fallen on the ground. Two or three passers-by had been in the street at the time; at least one person had been walking a dog. As soon as they had left, a man had picked up a hat left on the ground and placed it on the fence. As can be seen from subsequent documents, in March and April 2011 the investigators made a list of dog owners in the neighbourhood and tried to identify additional witnesses, but without success.
34.  In March 2010, the investigators identified other CCTV cameras which were present at the scene. However, by that time the relevant data had been destroyed since it was only stored for periods ranging from five days to one month.
35.  The investigators also questioned the missing men’s friends and acquaintances, none of whom had any information about the men’s whereabouts or possible reasons for their abduction.
36.  In April 2010 the applicants requested the Investigative Committee to amend the classification of the crime under investigation and to bring charges of abduction. This request was ultimately refused by the investigating authority.
37.  Also in April 2010, the St Petersburg department of the Federal Security Service (FSB) (“the regional department of the FSB”) refused to disclose any information about the alleged detention of the applicants’ four relatives, referring to the absence of a legal representation contract between the applicants and the lawyer who had lodged the relevant application. On 7 June 2010 the Kuybyshevskiy District Court rejected the applicants’ appeal against that refusal.
38.  On 4 June 2010 the regional department of the FSB informed the applicants’ representative that their office had no information that the four men had been detained.
39.  At some point in 2010 the investigator in charge of the case summarised all the available information on the suspicious vehicles seen by the applicants and their relatives in the aftermath of the abduction: all the registration numbers communicated by the witnesses either belonged to different vehicles, or had gone out of circulation before the events in question.
40.  On 20 December 2010 the lawyer representing the first two applicants wrote to the head of the St Petersburg Investigative Committee and asked to be informed of the progress of the investigation. She noted that the relatives of the disappeared men had had no information on the progress of the proceedings for the past nine months.
41.  On 30 December 2010 the investigator in charge of the case partially granted the representative’s request to be informed of the progress of the case. The decision stated that the term of the investigation had been extended on 25 December 2010 to 25 April 2011. After that over eighty witnesses had been questioned whose mobile telephones had been detected at the relevant time along the route used by the victims, and the results of the audio-visual technical expert report had been obtained. However, the investigator rejected the representative’s request to obtain copies of documents from the criminal investigation file, including the decisions extending the term of the proceedings. He argued that the victims’ right to acquaint themselves with the criminal investigation file was conditional on the termination of the proceedings. Since the proceedings were pending, the victims had no right of access to the file.
42.  On 25 April 2011 an investigator of the St Petersburg Investigative Committee ruled to suspend the proceedings in criminal investigation no. 122407 since the culprits could not be identified. The decision contained a detailed review of the steps taken up to that date. Thus, it noted that the technical expert report on the CCTV records had been unable to establish the registration numbers or types of the vehicles which had pursued and blocked the disappeared men’s car on the night in question. It referred to the eyewitness testimony of three local residents, who had confirmed the events during a reconstruction. The decision further mentioned that the investigators had identified additional CCTV cameras which could have captured the incident, but their data had been erased by the time the criminal investigation was opened. Between November 2010 and March 2011 the investigators identified and questioned about eighty persons whose mobile phones had been within range of the site of the incident at the relevant time. The decision concluded that the case file contained no materials to support the allegation that the State authorities had been involved in the abduction, and that the applicants’ relatives had not been detained or prosecuted for any crimes.
43.  The applicants submitted that they had not received notification of the decision of 25 April 2011. On 8 July 2011 their lawyer lodged a complaint similar to that of 30 December 2010. She noted that she had not been informed of any developments in the proceedings after 25 April 2011 and was not aware of their current state.
44.  At the time of the Government’s final observations of December 2011, the investigation was still pending.
45.  In May 2010 the first applicant issued an affidavit to her lawyer. She stated that on 17 May 2010 she had been summoned to the St Petersburg City Department of the Interior, the 4th operative division, charged with combating religious extremism. There an officer who had introduced himself as “Alexander” had told her, unofficially, that in early May 2010 at a meeting the division had been told by their superior that the apprehension of the four men had been carried out jointly by officers of the special “Alpha” unit of the Main Counterintelligence Directorate of the Army (“the GRU”) and the FSB. The vehicles which had taken part in the operation had belonged to the FSB. “Alexander” had told her that they had been instructed to stop their activities in the case and to “produce one piece of paper per month”, carrying out only a formal semblance of an investigation.
46.  In May 2010 the applicant’s lawyer collected a written statement from Magomed M., who stated that on 3 May 2010 he had been detained for several hours in St Petersburg for questioning by a police officer who had told him that he and Ali Dzhaniyev were being sought in Rostov on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts in St Petersburg. It appears that no formal records were drawn up as a result of this questioning. Magomed M. denied knowing Ali Dzhaniyev.
47.  On 14 May 2010 the applicant’s lawyer collected a written statement from Yegor R., a resident of St Petersburg and a practising Muslim. Yegor R. was convinced that he had been followed by the FSB since 2009 and that he could not find work because of FSB involvement. He had been arrested in March 2009 and charged with dissemination of extremist literature and statements (in April 2011 he was found guilty as charged and sentenced to 120 hours of community labour). He stated that his case had been investigated by the same investigator as the one who had been in charge of the murder of the applicants’ relatives. Yegor R. had known Yunus Dobriyev through the Islamic Cultural Centre in St Petersburg, where the latter used to teach.